The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589

The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589
Author: Toby Green
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2011-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139503588

The region between the river Senegal and Sierra Leone saw the first trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drawing on many new sources, Toby Green challenges current quantitative approaches to the history of the slave trade. New data on slave origins can show how and why Western African societies responded to Atlantic pressures. Green argues that answering these questions requires a cultural framework and uses the idea of creolization - the formation of mixed cultural communities in the era of plantation societies - to argue that preceding social patterns in both Africa and Europe were crucial. Major impacts of the sixteenth-century slave trade included political fragmentation, changes in identity and the re-organization of ritual and social patterns. The book shows which peoples were enslaved, why they were vulnerable and the consequences in Africa and beyond.

The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589

The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589
Author: Toby Green
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2011-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781107014367

The region between the river Senegal and Sierra Leone saw the first trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drawing on many new sources, Toby Green challenges current quantitative approaches to the history of the slave trade. New data on slave origins can show how and why Western African societies responded to Atlantic pressures. Green argues that answering these questions requires a cultural framework and uses the idea of creolization - the formation of mixed cultural communities in the era of plantation societies - to argue that preceding social patterns in both Africa and Europe were crucial. Major impacts of the sixteenth-century slave trade included political fragmentation, changes in identity, and the reorganization of ritual and social patterns. The book shows which peoples were enslaved, why they were vulnerable, and the consequences in Africa and beyond.

A Fistful of Shells

A Fistful of Shells
Author: Toby Green
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 651
Release: 2019-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 022664474X

By the time the “Scramble for Africa” among European colonial powers began in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for centuries. Its gold had fueled the economies of Europe and the Islamic world for nearly a millennium, and the sophisticated kingdoms spanning its west coast had traded with Europeans since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies—most importantly, cowrie shells imported from the Maldives and nzimbu shells imported from Brazil. But, as the slave trade grew, African kingdoms began to lose prominence in the growing global economy. We have been living with the effects of this shift ever since. With A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa by reconstructing the world of these kingdoms, which revolved around trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, and the production of art. Green shows how the slave trade led to economic disparities that caused African kingdoms to lose relative political and economic power. The concentration of money in the hands of Atlantic elites in and outside these kingdoms brought about a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa, parallel to the upheavals then taking place in Europe and America. Yet political fragmentation following the fall of African aristocracies produced radically different results as European colonization took hold. Drawing not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, art, oral history, archaeology, and letters, Green lays bare the transformations that have shaped world politics and the global economy since the fifteenth century and paints a new and masterful portrait of West Africa, past and present.

From Africa to Brazil

From Africa to Brazil
Author: Walter Hawthorne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139788760

From Africa to Brazil traces the flows of enslaved Africans from the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil. These two regions, though separated by an ocean, were made one by a slave route. Walter Hawthorne considers why planters in Amazonia wanted African slaves, why and how those sent to Amazonia were enslaved, and what their Middle Passage experience was like. The book is also concerned with how Africans in diaspora shaped labor regimes, determined the nature of their family lives, and crafted religious beliefs that were similar to those they had known before enslavement. It presents the only book-length examination of African slavery in Amazonia and identifies with precision the locations in Africa from where members of a large diaspora in the Americas hailed. From Africa to Brazil also proposes new directions for scholarship focused on how immigrant groups created new or recreated old cultures.

Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade

Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Author: Boubacar Barry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521597609

Authoritative account of 400 years of West African history by a leading scholar.

An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World

An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World
Author: Mariana Candido
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2013-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107328381

This book traces the history and development of the port of Benguela, the third largest port of slave embarkation on the coast of Africa, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Benguela, located on the central coast of present-day Angola, was founded by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century. In discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies, Mariana P. Candido explores the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states and the emergence of new states. Placing Benguela in an Atlantic perspective, this study shows how events in the Caribbean and Brazil affected social and political changes on the African coast. This book emphasizes the importance of the South Atlantic as a space for the circulation of people, ideas and crops.

The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867

The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867
Author: Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107176263

This book traces the inland origins of slaves leaving West Central Africa at the peak period of the transatlantic slave trade.

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2018-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004380183

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past offers a comprehensive assessment of new directions in the historiography of West Africa. With twenty-four chapters by leading researchers in the study of West African history and cultures, the volume examines the main trends in multiple fields including the critical interpretation of Arabic sources; new archaeological surveys of trans-Saharan trade; the discovery of sources in Latin America relating to pan-Atlantic histories; and the continuing analysis of oral histories. The volume is dedicated to Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, whose work inspired the intellectual reorientations discussed in its chapters and stands as the clearest formulation of the book’s central focus on the relationship between political conjunctures and the production of sources. Contributors are: Benjamin Acloque, Karin Barber, Seydou Camara, Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Nikolas Gestrich, Toby Green, Bruce Hall, Jan Jansen, Shamil Jeppie, Daouda Keita, Murray Last, Robin Law, Camille Lefebvre, Paul Lovejoy, Ghislaine Lydon, Carlos Magnavita, Sonja Magnavita, Kevin MacDonald, Thomas McCaskie, Ann McDougall, Daniela Moreau, Mauro Nobili, Insa Nolte, Abel-Wedoud Ould-Cheikh, Benedetta Rossi, Charles Stewart.

Assembling the Tropics

Assembling the Tropics
Author: Hugh Cagle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107196639

This book charts the convergence of science, culture, and politics across Portugal's empire, showing how a global geographical concept was born. In accessible, narrative prose, this book explores the unexpected forms that science took in the early modern world. It highlights little-known linkages between Asia and the Atlantic world.